Devan Kline
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
You take pitching specifically, and there's a lot of recovery nuances, a lot of longevity nuances, a lot of, we really care about that stuff, right? Because we couldn't be We couldn't have our product be our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity, right? We tell people like, this is going to be long, hard, and difficult. And it's going to take consistency and discipline and dedication.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days. You know, likely you're not going to like, you know, wake up one day and like, Be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years. And are you in for this ride? Do you believe that you're worth it?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And so we have that recovery element built in because what we're telling people is that it's the opposite of what everyone else is saying, really, in the macro sense of like, hey, come do this fast. Like, oh, you're not okay? That's okay. Just come in any way. Do it fast. Join the membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. And it's like, okay, well, that's flat.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
You get companies that say, one day it says they're signed on their building, the next day it says for lease, and you're like, why is that happening? So yeah, I think that's a combination of... Sounds like... Sprinkle a little bit of bigger... You do sprinkle a little bit of bigger, faster, stronger in there from my high school days too. If anybody's ever heard of that program.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
That is right. That's it in a nutshell. My answer was real long-winded.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
What's that roller coaster been like? Definitely one, right? In 2015, when we announced that we were going to franchise in all 50 states, We thought hitting the home run might be awarding 10 units in our first year and really getting those stood up. And we were always concerned with unit economics. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And Fran did this article out of Franchise Times Magazine. It was one of our first... earned media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of. And it said that we're in the 99% of all growth from all franchises of any franchise that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in. And I'm like, Okay, well, we better not screw this up then.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So how do we get all of these gyms open? We got to focus on, we call it ULEs, unit level economics. You had a guest on, Jeff Duden, who's from this area. He taught me this, actually. He's been a good friend and mentor of mine throughout the years. He taught me validation and franchising. And validation really in any business, it's not a franchise particular concept.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
but it's the stakeholders of your business being happy. It's your debt promoter score. How likely are they to recommend this business or doing business with you to somebody else? And number one, number one thing is, number one box to check, if you will, is are they making money? And what type of money are they making?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So I'm always looking for a, this might be something people want to write down because I'll give you like a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Let's say the investment is at $500,000. I need to make a million dollars in year one. in order for that investment to be considered an A-plus investment for me.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So it's a two-to-one investment cash to year one revenue ratio. And that's how we want to get every location out of the gate. Do all of them do that? No. But what that's really done, having that expectation, is we've aligned clearly and early with our franchise partners who are really driving the unit-level economics. We've learned that when we have that expectation, they start higher.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
They start with more members. They start better off. And getting to that place of having world-class economics and boutique fitness was a long road, but definitely a doable one because that was our focus the whole time from the very beginning. So...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
the big, what the hell are we going to do moment was when we had 200 and we had like 10 open, you know, like in franchising, it's the similar, it's kind of similar to fitness. What we were just talking about, like, Everyone wants to just go fast, fast, scale, scale, scale. It is a vehicle for scale. And I love the vehicle for scale. But you can also scale yourself right into the ground.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And you see that happen all the time in this industry. Particularly the industry that I'm in, the boutique fitness franchising industry. So yeah, it's a... I mean, think about it. It's logical, right? I mean, I care about my people so much. This isn't about money for me. This is about my franchise partners who invested their 401k
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
who invested their life savings, who liquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to, sold their house and moved across the state, who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri and stayed in a hotel room for three months away from their children so they could go chase their dream. This is all about returning an ROI for them.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And so with that type of mindset, that real people first core value, We're able to take what's in the gym, translate that up to a franchise partner network, translate that into an HQ culture. Now we're on the East Coast, so we're on the West Coast bi-coastal headquarters operating the business that way. And we're... Economics are better than they've ever been.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
We use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising, how much each individual gym makes on average. And we'll be up near the 600s at the end of the year, which is top three in our space. So... People first, like people first. And I'm going to preach that to the day that Morgan and I hang them up, which we're in the big leagues now. So I'm going to stay as long as we can.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Definitely, the number one thing is that you're going to scale your business fast. You want to invest ahead of that growth curve. You've got to anticipate that. I heard Tony Robbins once say that anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur. And you're able to see over the hill before anyone else can. You can see the horizon over the horizon when no one else can.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Well, your ability to navigate your way there is geometrically enhanced. And so what I always try to do is set big goals for the system. starting with unit economic goals and then set more broad range targets. So I stepped on the stage at our summit in 2021 and I said, we're going to build 10,000 units to the moon.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And half my system was like, because we're a competitive culture, they were like, let's go. They're all pumped up. And the other half was like, how the hell are we going to do that? Like, I don't know. I trust you, but you know, that's a lot of units, right? It's like, how are we going to do that? The beauty is like, I don't need to know how we're going to do it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
I just need to know that it's a big enough why, there's a big enough purpose because the people you're impacting in your community are also in other countries and they deserve the same thing. They deserve a people first business product. And so, you know, um, But we're only going to do that through you guys, right?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
How we're going to do that is focus all of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee, you're able to get those AUVs up and then reinvest into the brand. So for us, just to give you a lay of the landscape, like Byrne Brands is like, that's Byrne Bootcamp and that's the front runner. That's the spearhead. Franchising really is about distribution, right?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So now we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath, an activewear business underneath, a real estate business underneath. an investment company underneath that takes non-passive, non-controlling stakes in companies that we're partnered with.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And, you know, you start to, you know, think about secular franchises and other opportunities now that you have the infrastructure and the distribution. And it's like, that makes the return on investment for the franchisees even more important, right? And putting more chips in our basket so our opportunities get bigger as we go forward. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Yeah, you know, I love your marketing mind. And, you know, if I had to pick a... I'm an entrepreneur, right? But if I had to pick a vertical that I'm most confident in, it'd definitely be branding, I think, as a more specific term than marketing. And when I say branding, what I really mean is measuring things like brand equity. Pier 1 Imports is a good example.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Pier 1 Imports went out of business and then their logo sold for $50 million. And they were just burning cash, right? If your real estate portfolio is burning cash, unless you have some brand equity or some recognizable logo or something that's going to sustain it. It just crashes. There's nothing... There's no recovery element there.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
So when I think of being... When I think of the people that are listening to this and they're all entrepreneurs, it's obvious that owning your own business, right? Number one, a brand or number two, real estate portfolio, arguably are one of the two best ways to build the wealth initially. And I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
I've got a logo that means something to people, even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore. And So for me, it's always been about And marketers try to measure this, but I think it's just them trying to be smart. It's like smoke and mirrors. And I said, try to measure brand lift. It's like, well, okay. Yes.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
What you're talking about is, okay, all the impressions from the signage, all the impressions from social media, all the impressions from word of mouth. Or one time in the mountains when Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim and Uncle Tim then takes his family in Seattle, Washington. You can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables. So...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
so finitely that it disregards all the things that actually create the brand lift. So I don't know if anybody is ever confused by brand lift. I'm a branding expert and I still don't get it. But that's what you're talking about is how does the collective touch points or the collective...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
eyeballs on your brand Gary Vee says attention is currency right and he's so right what he's really saying is that brand awareness is your currency and once I got once I got all of the different units up rocking and rolling you'd be surprised who comes out of the woodwork my buddies from like my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that you know logo it said my wife just joined so Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
And then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social media and all the contemporary marketing stuff on top of that, like we did. And I think that's the recipe. So you got to have the layer over the top. You've got to have the the brand lift elements and then the hyper local community where you're in the field.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur
Our FPs are in the field with their team, shaking hands, kissing babies, running for mayor, like just making sure that they're the conversation when it comes to fitness in the town.